About Clozure CL

Clozure CL is an open source Common Lisp implementation that runs on PowerPC hardware under Mac OS X and Linux, and on x86-64 hardware under Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. A port to 32-bit x86 is progressing well; a port to 64-bit Windows is also pretty far along.

Some distinguishing features of the implementation include:

• fast compilation speed
• native OS threads
• precise, generational, compacting garbage collector
• convenient foreign-function interface

Clozure CL used to be called OpenMCL. It is also sometimes called CCL. You will see the three names being used interchangeably.

Getting Clozure CL

Please see  Obtaining, Installing, and Running Clozure CL for complete instructions.

Archives of release candidate 1 of Clozure CL 1.2 are avalable via anonymous ftp at  ftp://ftp.clozure.com/pub/release/1.2/.

Old Versions

Snapshots of Clozure CL 1.1 are available via anonymous ftp at  ftp://ftp.clozure.com/pub/testing/. The most recent snapshot release is from July 2007; there has been a lot of activity since then. Therefore, once you have the snapshot installed and running, you'll probably want to update from sources. See UpdatingFromSource (for CVS users) and UpdateFromSubversion for instructions on how to do that.

Documentation

The Clozure CL manual is available on the web at  http://ccl.clozure.com/ccl-documentation.html or  http://ccl.clozure.com/manual/. As of Clozure CL 1.2, the DocBook sources for the manual are included with the distribution.

Mailing Lists

There are two CCL-related mailing lists hosted at clozure.com. These lists are managed with GNU Mailman software, which provides a simple web-based interface for managing subscription options.

*  openmcl-devel@clozure.com is intended for general and technical discussion of Clozure CL. Archives of list messages are available  here.

*  openmcl-announce@clozure.com is intended to be a low-volume list intended for release announcements. Archives are available  here.

Support and Consulting

 Clozure Associates provides commercial support and consulting services for Clozure CL as well as other Common Lisp implementations. These services can range from helping you debug your software to adding extensions to CCL, to providing several full time Lisp programmers to help you build your application. Please contact us at business@… for more information.

Starting Points

CCL Basics

• Getting Around in CCL - quick tips for working with CCL's toplevel.
• Installing SLIME -- Install SLIME and configure it for use with CCL.
• CCL Hints -- Tips and Tricks from Clozure CL Experts (and wanna-be's).
• The Inspector -- How to use CCL's Inspector.
• Building Large Projects -- How to construct software consisting of multiple Lisp source files.
• Tracking CCL changes -- How to do keep up with the latest changes.
• Tracking the development version -- There are reasons why it's often called the "bleeding edge".
• Committing your own changes into SVN -- Let us know if you want write access to the SVN repository.

In-Depth CCL

• Clozure CL FFI -- Working with external libraries
• Cocoa Bridge -- Create Rich User Interfaces with the Cocoa Bridge
• Easy GUI -- Create slightly less Rich Interfaces with Easy GUI
• Apple's Currency Converter in Lisp -- Build Apple's Currency Converter tutorial example in Lisp
• Clozure CL Internals -- Learn the magic behind the scenes
• Declare Optimize -- What do optimization declarations do and how is this implemented
• Threads and Setf -- In what ways is assignment atomic?
• How Fast Are We compared to other Lisps?
• IDE Internals and architecture -- How the CCL IDE works
• Hemlock Command Implementor's Manual -- detailed documentation on CCL's editor
• Running CCL Under GDB
• Heap Utilization -- Find out what kinds of objects are filling up your memory
•  More Clozure CL Documentation -- Current CCL manual.

Orient Yourself to Clozure CL Culture

• The History of CCL
• People in the CCL community
• CCL Projects -- Projects using CCL
• CCL Software -- Software successfully built using CCL
• ToDo -- Things that need to be done, should be done, someone's doing, or someone should be doing
• Successful Lisp Translations